A couple of Cabin Crew in Norwegian (and Ryanair) told me that Finnair are opening a base in BCN & MAD with 1 aircraft, to operate HEL (assumedly twice daily)

Don't know the deal for flight-deck . . night-stop/temp base/ cheapo Spanish contract, but, I think we can imagine where this one will go.

Finnair to cut 100 flight crew jobs Finnair plans to let go about 100 cabin attendants. The national carrier says it will begin using subcontracted crew on its flights to Spain.

Finnair has some 2,000 flight attendants. Image: Arja Lento / YLE The airline plans to use locally-based crew on regular routes to Barcelona, Madrid and leisure flights to the Canary Islands. Some crew for its New York route and Asian charter flights will also be hired locally.

According to the airline, reductions would be implemented through temporary layoffs during 2013.

"Possible redundancies would be implemented earliest in 2014," after the protection from redundancies in the current collective labour agreement with cabin attendants ends, it said in a statement.

"Using local cabin crew on our Spanish routes would be a natural way to decrease costs," Anssi Komulainen, Customer Service Senior Vice President said.

"On these long routes, the crew has to stay overnight at the destination, which adds to hotel and daily allowance costs, among others. By having the cabin crew based in Spain on these routes, we could generate savings."

The airline said that the decision to lay off the cabin attendants is part of a bigger corporate plan to slash costs at the company.

Finnair announced in August last year that it targets decreases in its annual costs of 140 million euros by 2014.

The flag carrier employs approximately 1700 cabin attendants in Finland, and approximately 300 in China, Japan, Thailand, India, South Korea and Singapore.